A biography for Thomas Huxleyhasn’t been written yet.
“I do not say think as I think, but think in my way. Fear no shadows, least of all in that great spectre of personal unhappiness which binds half the world to orthodoxy.”
“The rung of a ladder was never meant to rest upon, but only to hold a man's foot long enough to enable him to put the other somewhat higher.”
“Science and literature are not two things, but two sides of one thing.”
“No slavery can be abolished without a double emancipation, and the master will benefit by freedom more than the freed-man.”
“The child who has been taught to make an accurate elevation, plan, and section of a pint pot has had an admirable training in accuracy of eye and hand.”
“Time, whose tooth gnaws away everything else, is powerless against truth.”
“The great thing in the world is not so much to seek happiness as to earn peace and self-respect.”
“There is the greatest practical benefit in making a few failures early in life.”
“It is because the body is a machine that education is possible. Education is the formation of habits, a superinducing of an artificial organization upon the natural organization of the body.”
“Make up your mind to act decidedly and take the consequences. No good is ever done in this world by hesitation.”
“The Bible has been the Magna Carta of the poor and of the oppressed.”
“The scientific imagination always restrains itself within the limits of probability.”
“The struggle for existence holds as much in the intellectual as in the physical world. A theory is a species of thinking, and its right to exist is coextensive with its power of resisting extinction by its rivals.”
“Books are the money of Literature, but only the counters of Science.”
“The improver of natural knowledge absolutely refuses to acknowledge authority, as such. For him, skepticism is the highest of duties; blind faith the one unpardonable sin.”
“It is not who is right, but what is right, that is of importance.”
“The only question which any wise man can ask himself, and which any honest man will ask himself, is whether a doctrine is true or false.”
“Ecclesiasticism in science is only unfaithfulness to truth.”
“Science has fulfilled her function when she has ascertained and enunciated truth.”
“Teach a child what is wise, that is morality. Teach him what is wise and beautiful, that is religion!”